


One Way - Or Another

by andjudar



Category: Divergent (Movies), Divergent - All Media Types, Divergent Series - Veronica Roth
Genre: F/M, Gen, Other
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-11-03
Updated: 2017-11-03
Packaged: 2019-01-28 22:29:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 6,234
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12616964
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/andjudar/pseuds/andjudar
Summary: Set a year before the events of Divergent, new Dauntless Transfer Katie is put to the test and very quickly regrets her decision, even though she didn't really have a choice at all. The brutal measurements Dauntless Leadership are applying will not see every initiate through to the end. Four makes mistakes that he will not repeat ever again!





	1. 1 The Test

***The Test***

Nobody would ever really ask – or even dare to question - why the faction system needed the young to choose. It was a given, a fact that all factions respected. Each year, all 16 year olds were required to take the Aptitude Test. The purpose of the test was to discover a disposition towards the five factions by showing an inclination to one of the five traits. Apparently, that provided a good indication of what faction a person should choose, based on that one predominant characteristic. But did everybody “define” by just one trait? Katie had always wondered. What if people wanted to be more? The factions were so one-dimensional, so restricting, so ill-designed. But the general belief was that in dividing people according to personality and attitude they created a society in which each faction plays a critical role in maintaining the social order and everybody would just blindly follow whatever rules were there to follow.

This year, it was Katherine’s time to take her Aptitude Test. Deep down, she was actually looking forward to what came after, to the Choosing Ceremony, as all she was thinking about was to get away from Amity. She knew that Amity would probably be the faction that she would best fit on if it all came down to maintaining peace above all, even if it meant to lie to keep it. And Katherine had made an art of it. Against everybody’s belief that Amity was the faction of love and peace, in truth things were far from that. Always peaceful, always safe, that was their slogan. Blame aggression for the problems in the world. Be kind, be loving, be free. Screw that! At least in her life there was nothing kind, nothing loving, and least of all, nothing that resembled freedom.

Amity was one of the five factions that made up society. Members of that faction were dedicated to peacefulness, kindness, forgiveness, trust, self-sufficiency, and neutrality, as it was created by those who blamed war and fighting for the faults in human nature. Amity was the faction that disliked war and it was designed in order to have a peaceful society free from conflict and sadness caused by wars and instigation. To the outside world, Amity were all about kindness and harmony, always happy. Katherine’s life was not happy at all. Since her mother had passed, her life had been all but happy and she was sure that she hadn’t snapped already only due to the peace serum in their daily bread. Yet, peace did not mean honesty, as certain truths – albeit being known by many and not appreciated by only a few – were simply quieted down and never spoken of again if it helped to keep the peace, since peace was what they valued most.

Katherine’s name meant purity, clarity, to be smart with life. But she hated her name as she didn’t feel pure or smart and she definitely couldn’t see or think clearly anymore. She hated it as much as she hated her faction. She hated everyone, but none as much as she hated herself. And that was where the problem was. Why did she have to hate herself? It hadn’t all been her fault, that she knew. Yet, everybody who knew about it blamed her, and so she blamed herself, too. It was much easier to hate oneself than to hate someone else.

***

She was nervous when she entered the room. Sparsely decorated, it was cold and sterile. The walls were mirrored and the bright light was harsh. There was a reclining chair in the middle, like a dentist’s chair, and a computer setup with a chair in front of it close by. A dark-haired woman sat on the chair, impatiently waving a hand to make the new candidate hurry up. How could she not know or see how important this test must be for everybody taking it, or how could she be so bored that she just didn’t care anymore? This test would decide about who you were, who Katherine would be.

Katherine did as silently indicated. Sit down, be quiet, get it over with. The woman who now loomed over her with the vial in hand smiled reassuringly while connecting electrodes to her head, but it was more than obvious that she was bored out of her mind. All day long the same thing, making people drink the liquid that would put the person under the simulation, watching their minds being torn wide open and trampled upon on screens, deciding which one faction-feature was predominant, most likely suffering from small talk if the candidates were in a chatty mood. Katherine kept quiet, she only tightened her lips into a thin line waiting for the serum to work. The woman put one hand on her shoulder to make Katherine look at her. “You will be offered with a variety of choices to test your aptitude for each faction until you get one result. Always think about what you would do!”

And then the world fell away.

To her, it felt as if she had closed her eyes only for a moment, but when she opened them again, she was standing in the middle of a mirror maze. It took her a moment to get her bearings, orientation had never been much of a strength. Behind her – or at least she thought it was behind her, the many mirrors to all sides and her own endless reflection made it difficult to know which was her – was a wooden pedestal with a white plate on it. There was a slice of cheese and a knife. Katherine almost jumped out of her skin when a female voice boomed through the room, making the glass shudder. “Choose!”

Katherine raised her gaze to the ceiling, searching for a speaker, for anything that would give away where they voice had come from but couldn’t find any flaw in the endless reflecting mirrors. It had only been a second, but when she lowered her eyes again, the pedestal with the plate had disappeared. In its place was now a dog, dark brown, shaggy, big, teeth bared, snarling at her. Hesitantly, she took a step backwards. The dog followed, and Katherine could see the fur on its back standing on end. She raised her hands in a peaceful gesture but the dog didn’t retreat. She took another step back but bumped against one of the mirrors. The dog jumped at her and she threw herself onto the ground. Nothing happened. It was silent again. She looked up but all she saw was a little girl in a terracotta colored dress standing about 2 meters away from her, smiling. She looked familiar, Katherine thought but couldn’t really place her. A moment passed, and something changed around her. The air in the room suddenly tensed up significantly and now it was the hair on her neck that stood on end. Scrambling to her feet, she knew before she saw what was behind the girl. The dog was back, but somehow it had bigger teeth new and a much more aggressive growl and it was charging at the little girl. It was only in that moment that she realized that the girl was actually her younger self but without any further thinking, she threw herself between the furious dog and the child, pulling her up into her arms and lifting her out of harm’s way. Katherine could feel the dog’s teeth rip through her shirt as it crashed into her back and she stumbled forward, falling into the mirror.

Just when she was about to cry out, her surroundings had changed. She was sitting in a bus. Her brain registered that they were moving but she couldn’t make out any landscape out there. In front of her was a person reading a newspaper. They were the only people on that bus and no matter how hard she looked, she couldn’t see the driver. The rustling of the newspaper being lowered made her turn around again. Seeing her face came as a shock, as she was badly beaten up. There were cuts and bruises, all sorts of colors and bumps and scars. Something looked out of place, though, some of the bruises seemed much older than they should have been to be still visible. The woman – void of any emotion and facial expression – turned the newspaper around and pointed a finger at the enlarged black-and-white photo of a man.

“Do you know this man?” She asked with a bodiless voice, barely moving her cut and swollen lips. Her eyes seemed to pierce straight through Katherine’s consciousness and she knew that the woman opposite of her knew what was going on in her mind. Almost unconsciously, Katherine shook her head, eyes wide, breathing hard.

“He did that to me…” she said. “It would help me if you told me…” Katherine shrank into her seat. It all felt so repulsive that all she could think about was to get away from where she was. “Do you know him?” The battered woman with the creepy voice asked again and somehow she got bigger and more menacing. 

As Katherine scrambled out of her seat and moved backwards, she didn’t seem to cover any ground. The bus seemed to get longer and longer and the door moved out of reach with every step she took towards it.  All the time – and she felt that it was ages – she couldn’t take her eyes off the woman with the newspaper. And ever so slowly her face merged into what resembled herself and the picture of the man in the newspaper seemed to look more and more like her father. Senseless and desperate, she clawed at the seats around her to push her towards the exit.

“DO YOU KNOW HIM? DO YOU KNOW WHO THIS MAN IS?” The voice was everywhere and Katherine got more and more frantic. She shook her head violently. Inside, she was screaming but words didn’t want to come out of her mouth. “HE DID THAT TO ME! OVER AND OVER AGAIN! DO YOU KNOW HIM?”

Finally, she felt the door behind her and threw herself against it. Of course she knew the man! Of course she knew who he was and what he had done. She pried at the folding door of the bus so hard that she could feel her fingernails and skin break from her fingers. She didn’t want them to know the truth, she didn’t want anyone to know the truth.

“YOU CAN SAVE ME IF YOU TELL ME!” The tone of voice changed from to scary to needy, almost whiny and when Katherine looked one more time – expecting to see a monstrously disfigured person – she saw the young girl again, herself and at long last felt the doors opening behind her. Before she fell, the words she had been guarding deep inside for such a long time irretrievably shot out of her: “I know him, he is my father!”

With a gasp, Katherine came out of the simulation.


	2. 2 The Choosing

***The Choosing***

The woman administrating the test didn’t look at her but Katherine could see that what she must have observed on screen had disturbed her. There was a long and uncomfortable silence until the woman cleared her throat.

“You’re done…” was all she said before she busied herself typing something into the computer. She avoided Katherine’s questioning gaze as she told her that she showed a partiality towards Candor, but she didn’t feel at all relieved by that. It was definitely much better to be more Candor than showing partiality towards Amity, but she knew that she had not exhibited anything in the simulation that could be interpreted as peaceful or serene. Then again, she hadn’t shown anything truthful either, had she? She wondered how those simulations could ever show anything. How could someone who didn’t know the first thing about her tell her what to do? How could a simulation – a simulation! – tell her what the best choice for her future, for the rest of her life was? How did that even make sense?

Still shuddering, Katherine climbed out of the chair and stood, not knowing what was expected of her now. “That was all. You can go now.” was all the woman said. She pointed over her shoulder at the door, not even looking up.

With that – and only that – Katherine was unceremoniously dismissed.

She left the building, head hanging low. Her brain was still reveling in the negative feelings the simulation had left her with. The test was supposed to tell the taker what faction they would fit in, but what it had done for her was basically simply confirming that she couldn’t choose Amity. Should she follow on the advice – if you could say that it was as much – of the woman who administered her test that Candor was the correct faction of choice for her?

On her way back to Amity, she slacked because she didn’t want to get home at all. Test-takers needed to choose which faction they wanted to enter, either remaining where they were born or leaving their families and starting a new life in a new faction. A new start sounded about right to her, but it was nothing easy to be decided in a rush. However, she needed to make up her mind quickly, as the Choosing Ceremony was just around the corner.

She saw the glass dome already from the distance, amidst the green fields and trees and felt a pang of – of what exactly? She wasn’t sure. It almost felt like…longing. She had lived there for 16 years, and at least in her childhood, not all was bad times. She remembered sitting on Johanna’s lap when she was 3 years old, learning the songs of old. She remembered helping Hannah and Stuart with the horses, brushing them, feeding them. She remembered playing under the large tree with the other children, in between classes or chores. Childhood…childhood was something worth remembering. It was the last four years that she wished she could erase from her life. Thinking about it, it was almost hysterical that four years of constant pain and fear could so easily outweigh twelve years lived in peace and tranquility.

That feeling she felt turned more and more into a mix of anger and jealousy that this peace and happy living-together worked better for others than it had worked for herself. Why couldn’t she make it work? Was there something wrong with her? With each step she took towards the settlement, she got more and more upset. Why didn’t it work out for her here? Surrounded by beauty, by harmony and generally good people, it shouldn’t have been difficult to make it work.

The good thing was that nobody but the test taker should know the results and Katherine made sure to not let anyone get as close as to make her tell. She knew what her faction believed that most Amity born would stay in Amity as it was such a heavenly place to be, but Katherine knew better – so much better. And what was most important, she knew that with the decision she was facing, she could finally get away from the nightmare she was living.

She hid in the stables, her usual hideaway. Here in Amity, nobody would lock their doors, everybody shared whatever resources they had, and the community – for most of the people living there – provided a safety net where everybody could feel at ease and live untroubled. Most of the people – not all of them.

Katherine huddled herself into a corner, listening to the peaceful munching sounds the horses made while eating their nightly hay and the occasional braying and nickering, and slowly, sleep overcame her and she fell into a dreamless slumber which brought some but not much rest.

***

The next day, the day of the Choosing Ceremony, together with all the other 16 year olds from all five factions, she was led into the huge auditorium. Everybody was so excited and the majority even chatty, but she felt as if she and the others were like cattle herded to slaughter.

The choosers were all sitting next to their parents in the section corresponding to their faction. She sat on the far left side of her section, with her father beside her. She tried to appear calm as the unspoken question still lingered between them. But his face said it all – where had she been last night? She wouldn’t say and he wouldn’t openly ask but she hoped that he would not get a moment alone with her. It was all smiles and peace on the outside but she knew how he was on the inside – the monster that he was hiding.

A tall blond woman, dressed in a neat Erudite-blue pencil dress, introduced herself as Jeannine Matthews. Her voice was strong and engaging, her appearance impeccable and self-assured and her demeanor almost commanding. Katherine saw that many candidates visibly relaxed. As she still hadn’t made up her mind as to which faction to choose, she tried to imagine herself wearing the blue of the Scholars. Could she ever even be a Jeannine Matthews?

“One hundred years ago, after the war, our founders created a system they believed would prevent future conflict and create lasting peace, the five factions. You all underwent an aptitude testing to assign you to one of the factions, based on your personality. While it is our belief that choosing the faction indicated by your test is the best way to ensure success within the faction system, it is your right today at this choosing ceremony to choose any of the five factions, regardless of your test results. However, once the choice has been made, you cannot undo it. I want you to choose who you truly are and where you truly belong. Don’t decide on something as naive as a whim. You shouldn’t choose because you wish you were someone you're not. You should choose because you honestly know yourself. I ask you to choose wisely today. And I know you will. Today, each of you to will claim your rightful place. The future belongs to those who know where they belong. When you leave this room, you will no longer be dependents but full-fledged members of our society. But let me remind you the principle of our way of life: Faction before blood.”

The audience became alive as one voice: “Faction before blood!”

“Faction before blood.” She repeated. “It's an important ideal, but sometimes difficult to fulfill. It goes against our fundamental human nature. But that's exactly the weakness we need to overcome.  Human nature is the enemy. It's human nature to keep secrets, lie, steal. We have to work together to keep at bay what our Founders so devotedly eradicated. That's how we'll maintain a stable, peaceful society.” She smiled and Katherine felt a cold shiver run down her spine. That smile was so perfect it was intimidating.

Then, another man with graying hair and a tight and angry face, wearing Abnegation clothes, began reading through the list of names.

While others were called and made their decision, Katherine’s eyes darted across the five white bowls. Each bowl contained the founding materials of each faction and by cutting your hand and dropping blood onto the faction materials you chose the faction you thought represented you best. From left to right, the bowls represented Abnegation, Amity, Candor, Dauntless and Erudite. Many of the candidates had their mind made up already; their decision taking was quick and firm. Others hesitated and moved their hands from bowl to bowl before they let their blood sign them over to the faction of choice. But in the end, everyone made their choice. 

What Jeannine had said actually made sense to her. She shouldn’t be choosing because of how she felt, she should be making an educated decision. Trying to get away from an unbearable situation did not count as an educated choice – or did it? She watched candidate by candidate walk to the front, get on the stage and make their choice and work up the courage to live with it.

Then she heard her name being called out and the world fell away – no noise, no movement, it was just her and her fears. She thought she felt her father’s eyes burning into her when she finally walked up to the stage and took the knife. She slowly drew it across her palm – savoring the pain as it made her realize that she wasn’t as dead on the inside as she thought she was – and let her eyes travel over the five bowls.

Stone. Abnegation was the faction that valued the needs of others above the needs of oneself. Members of Abnegation would take over the public services in the city. If chosen, you had to show their leaders that you are selfless enough to be in that faction by doing 30 days of community service. She couldn’t possibly choose Abnegation, she wasn’t selfless at all. She was actually very selfish, thinking only about herself and wanting something that others might define as revenge.

Soil. Amity. Her own faction. Peace and Harmony above all. How pathetic. The only thing she knew for sure was that she wouldn’t under any circumstance choose Amity, even if it meant to become factionless. Anything but Amity.

Glass. Candor valued honesty above all else. Through the years, the Candor faction provided the people with trustworthy and sound leaders in law. They are very truthful, sometimes to the point of being tactless. They believed that if the person revealed all their secrets, they have no desire to lie about anything because the worst is already in the open. As in her Aptitude test, Katherine was told that she had a certain inclination towards Candor. She guessed that choosing that faction would be a wise choice to get the truth into the light. But she felt the initiation process too threatening as the council would use a truth serum and ask deeply personal questions in front of all those in the faction. Since Katherine believed she was to blame for what she had been through, she was scared of how the council would judge her as they valued honesty and order over everything else, even if the truth was painful and she wished they wouldn't.

Coal. Dauntless were the strong soldiers of the factions. Dauntless were those who guarded the Fence, making sure no one got in or out, and were the best soldiers. Dauntless were those who were brave, seeming almost fearless. Katherine liked the idea of becoming fearless, yet she wasn’t sure if there was anything left within her that could be considered as fear. Hate was not fear. But she still indulged the idea to be like them, to become courageous and indestructible.

Water. The dedication to knowledge, intelligence, curiosity and astuteness was what made Erudite a very interesting choice for many candidates. They believed, just like Jeannine Matthews, that human nature was to blame for everything that was wrong with society. Erudite ruled over reason as if they owned it. With their great thirst for knowledge, they were also considered to be the ones easily susceptible to moral corruption as knowledge ultimately led to lust for power. Katherine was afraid of power as she was afraid of those with power, like her father. Power meant lies, lies meant pain and pain meant fear.

And it was exactly that fear – that resentment – that she felt thinking about her father that made her finally hold her hand and squeeze her fist shut over the coals. The sizzling sound of her blood as it vaporized caused her to shiver but she bit her lip, swallowed her fear and lifted her chin as she walked over to the section where all the Dauntless born initiates and their parents sat. The room was undeniably quieter than after the decisions of the other transfers and it terrified the wits out of her.

Someone from the first row stood up to give her his seat. His eyes were wide and his mouth was open, he obviously was in shock. No Amity ever had transferred into Dauntless. Seeing Dauntless defect into Abnegation or even Amity however was nothing too peculiar. It happened every single year. But her decision seemed to have caused quite the shock. She was shocked herself.

Katherine could feel the eyes of many staring at her, drilling into her, but she sat down with her hands folded in her lap, her face set to stone, her teeth clenched and her heart pounding so hard that she dreaded that the people around her would hear. She felt her face hot and flushed, and her ears rang. She felt as if she was about to get sick but she knew that now she could not show any regret or weakness – any emotion at all.

There were only a handful of candidates left and Katherine watched each of them make their choice, but she didn’t register anything. Her hands were clenched together to hard that her knuckles had turned white and there was an uncomfortable stinging pain cursing through her fingers. Her mind, however, was numb. She didn’t dare to direct her gaze at anywhere but the stage and when the ceremony was finally over, she followed the large group of “new” Dauntless – like a sheep - out the back door into her new life, together with the other initiates. She didn’t look back at her faction, her friends, her father. She was glad to not go back to Amity as it had never been her home. She could be “not at home” anywhere else.


	3. 3 The Transfer

***The Transfer***

Katherine found out quite quickly that Dauntless had not been the wisest of choices.

‘Anything is better than Amity…’ was what she kept telling herself when she was now jostled along with all the runners trying to get on the train as it bulleted past them. She tried to keep up but caught her feet in the seam of her dress and stumbled. She got pushed to the ground, scraping the palms of her hands and her knees bloody in the sharp-edged gravel. One initiate stepped on her ankle while she was struggling to get back up. The pain was blinding but the numbing sensation set in almost immediately since all she could do was get back up and continue to run. Another initiate, Candor by the looks of his clothing, hooked one arm under hers and pulled her up, dragged her on, along with him. And then she had felt the cold hard rail in her bloody palm and pulled hard to yank herself up and into the moving train. It was only the matter of a split second but she realized that the rail she had grabbed to get onto the train had been the last. She almost hadn’t made it.

The boy – tousled brown hair, wide set brown eyes, freckles, thin lips – sat on his haunches in front of her, catching his breath as well. He smiled, an honest, caring smile.

“Are you alright?” he asked. “You hurt your leg…” he added with another smile when Katherine just stared at him blankly. It took another second or two until she reacted, but the boy waited patiently.

She must have looked shocked when she discovered that her ankle had swollen to the size of a small pumpkin because Candor inched closer and gave it a short inspection with deft fingers.

“It’s not broken.” He said matter-of-factly, then gave her another smile, this time a sad one. “You better take care…” He scrambled to his feet and disappeared into the crowd. Katherine didn’t have the willpower to get up too and follow him, so she just stayed where she was, in her spot on the floor.

Drained as she was – blame it on the running, but she felt that the decision taking hadn’t been easy after all – and trying to ignore the biting pain from her ankle that surfaced little by little and radiated through her whole body, she huddled up a corner to catch her breath, back against the steel wall, knees pulled up under her chin, arms wrapped tightly around her legs. Putting one hand to her ankle, she felt the bruising and the quite impressive swelling but was relatively sure that Candor had been right - nothing seemed to be fractured. Carefully, she eyed the people around her, most of the faces proud with a wide smile and daring eyes. Only a few looked around nervously and thus betrayed their calm. Katherine wasn’t nervous, not at all, she felt like she was completely void of emotions. It was as if she didn’t care anymore what would become of her. She would just go with the flow for as long as she could and then…well, then. What then?

She saw her reflection in the glass of the opposite door and even in her disheveled state, she actually liked what she saw. Her brightly colored dress was stained with blood and dust, and ripped at the bottom seam, across her knees and her elbows. Her thick and long brown hair was messy where it would usually be kempt slick against her head, framing her face. Her cheeks were flushed and her eyes were wild, even though the fear and fatigue were clearly edged on her face.

A sudden commotion made her snap out of her thoughts. Everyone crowded around the open doors. Katherine pushed herself up and looked out of the window. People from the first cars were jumping off the train onto the rooftop of a building. It apparently never got boring around here. The fleeting thought of ‘are they trying to kill off the majority of transfers on the first day?’ passed through her mind but she had no time to pursue that thought. She had been one of the last to climb on the train, and now she was one of the last to jump off it. Watching everybody else more or less recklessly jumping across the quite wide gap between the rails and the building, she tried to figure out the best way to jump with her injured foot but in the end, with the ledge coming up dangerously quickly, she just threw herself across and hoped for the best. Thinking was overrated, right?

She hit the gravel shoulder-first as she didn’t dare to land on her feet to not risk a more serious injury but rolled over on her back as she skidded forward due to the impulse from the train. It hurt like hell, the gravel seemed to be made out of shreds of glass and spikes. Once the tumbling stopped and she felt strong enough to not cry out when getting up, she scrambled to her feet.

The others were moving forward – and she followed, or better, was shoved – towards a single man, tall, broad shouldered, long dark hair hair slick with grease. There were piercings in his lips and eyebrows. He looked cruel and callous and the smile that played around his thin mouth was vile. It made him look wicked, like it had been cut into his face with knife. His eyes were dreadful, too. On the inside, Katherine recoiled from him but the crowd had a movement of its own and she ended up standing right in front of him. He didn’t seem to see her though. He didn’t really seem to see anyone. He didn’t seem to care what they had just been through, that whole ordeal of choosing and jumping off a moving train. He just stood there, all self-righteous, on a low brick wall.

“Initiates! Listen up!” His icy voice boomed through the air, ringing in her ears. “My name is Eric. I am one of your leaders! Please step closer, come on!” There was another of those sly smiles playing across his studded lips and Katherine didn’t like it at all. “Don’t be afraid, I don’t bite…” The little smile turned into a wide grin – an evil grin – and it made her wish to not having to be there even stronger. The coldness of his eyes made him look menacing. His face was pierced in so many places that it was hard to count all the rings and studs. When he now smiled, it pulled at the piercings, making the holes appear wider.

Everybody moved closer and now she could see that what Eric was standing on was not a wall at all, it was the railing of a huge opening in the roof of the building. The play of light and shadow made it impossible to see the bottom.

“If you want to enter Dauntless, this is the way in. And if you don't have the guts to jump, then obviously you don't belong in Dauntless.” He grinned.

“You want us to jump down there?” That was the Candor boy, his eyes wide open in shock with the sudden realization. Katherine felt the urge to step backwards but the people behind her were like a barricade.

“Jump or get thrown…” Eric said leisurely. “I honestly don’t care how you get down. But down you will go. If not, well then I guess you'll just have to find out where you will end up.” He looked around expectantly to see the realization dawn on the transfers’ faces – if they didn’t fulfil the initiation ritual, they would end up being factionless. “Someone's gotta go first. Who's it gonna be?” He sounded almost bored, and his words sounded rehearsed. Katherine was sure that this was his standard welcome-to-Dauntless speech that he had learnt by heart and worked hard to keep in his thick skull.

A few moments passed without the slightest noise but the wind, then a boy with black Dauntless clothes and green hair stepped forward. “I’ll go first!” he said in a voice full of male bravado and his friends – equally dressed in black and with intriguingly colorful hair - cheered him on. He climbed up the ledge of the low wall and peered down. His boldness was gone immediately and his face turned ashen. He looked back at Eric for help but only received a malicious snicker and a shove to the chest, sending him flailing backwards down into the seemingly bottomless pit. At least he didn’t scream, but Katherine figured that his pride didn’t allow it. After all, he was Dauntless-born, he shouldn’t be afraid at all.

A few others jumped - with only little hesitation – all Dauntless-born, all without help from Eric. He however pushed a couple of transfers that weren’t as willing and ambitious as the Dauntless. When only a handful was left, the Candor boy climbed up on the ledge and looked at her with a smile, almost as if to motivate her to not wait any longer, most likely to remind her that she had been last on the train, too. Sure enough, Eric was growing more and more impatient by the second. She felt as if he was just waiting for a chance to grab them all and fling them into the abyss, and she knew that he would take it out on the last one.

Another Dauntless threw himself down the hole right after the Candor boy and Katherine used the moment of Eric being distracted to crept toward the edge of the building and look down. Her body reacted accordingly to her mind, both went haywire with panic and dread. How could anyone in their right mind want to jump down? There was even more, how could anyone in their right mind want others to jump down?

She glanced back at Eric and realized that he had turned his attention – undivided now, one could say - at her and was closing in. She didn’t feel like waiting around for what he might do to her - a kick in the back was the least she thought him capable of doing – so she just bit back rising bile, closed her eyes and pushed herself off the ledge.

It was a terrible feeling, those few seconds of dropping down where all she saw was her life rushing by before her eyes, being almost sure of certain death. The drop was awful, she felt wave after wave of nausea wash over her as she helplessly flailed her arms and legs as if that by any chance would help her.

The drop ended abruptly and with it the thoughts of how much pain she would be feeling upon contact with the concrete, once she reached it. The sharp slap of raw rope-like material against her already bruised skin caused almost more of a shock than the fall itself, as she had already made peace with imminent death. The impact pressed the air out of her lungs but once her fingers tangled through the strands of rope, she couldn’t suppress a slightly crazy giggle. Sure, even though Eric seemed to be a total jerk, Dauntless Leadership wouldn’t necessarily kill off their transfers on the very first day.

For a moment, she just hung in the net, contemplating that thought, but the peace didn’t last long. She felt harsh movement in the net and before she could even blink, the impulse had her rolling to her left and directly into the arms of a dark haired boy.


End file.
